Chads93GT wrote:soak that same rope with water. 800' i mean, and I wonder how much weight that would add. Bridge day in the rain..................wouldnt want to haul up that rope, then again, 2 years ago i hauled a 10 pound sack of rocks tied to the end of our rope, all the way back up to the bridge at the end of the day. That sucked.

No, Safety team simply used a bag and put rocks in it from the side of the road before lowering the rope down to me (I was on the ground doing pull tests that year) since no one on the surface brought a milk jug. Anyway when the rope got to the ground I forgot to untie it, and no one else did throughout the day. AT the end of the day I was on the top derigging and I started to pull the rope up lol.....................never again.

I tried it, and it was more or less impossible to pull up rope with the thing flopping around. So I clipped the cowstail into the top (now bottom) hole of the upside down ascender and "stepped" in the resulting loop. With the ascender thus tensioned, I could easily haul up slack rope. I'll never use this stuff in real life probably, but I guess there is some value in doing as many odd things on rope as possible. An unusual or emergency situation may reveal the need to employ some unusual methods.

Check out this video to see a competently performed changeover from frog ascent to rappel, descender below the croll. This guy is using a bobbin and a micro-rack, but if you're his shape and size, which I more or less am, this method works fine with a 6-bar j-frame.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEb4-qMroWs

And check out this one too, which is another frog to bobbin, but illustrates, I think, that priority needn't always be placed on a low attachment point. The high croll doesn't effect this lady's ability to changeover, or her ability to climb.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRzHqHvPp9s

GroundquestMSA wrote:Check out this video to see a competently performed changeover from frog ascent to rappel, descender below the croll. This guy is using a bobbin and a micro-rack, but if you're his shape and size, which I more or less am, this method works fine with a 6-bar j-frame.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEb4-qMroWs

And check out this one too, which is another frog to bobbin, but illustrates, I think, that priority needn't always be placed on a low attachment point. The high croll doesn't effect this lady's ability to changeover, or her ability to climb.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRzHqHvPp9s

Interesting videos. One advantage with the Stop shown in the first video is being able to pull slack through as you stand to transfer weight. Of course this violates the "hard lock" rule which many people adhere to, so in practice I see most people changing over with a Stop more like his micro rack demo. And there was no rappel test here, so no confirmation the descender was rigged properly before committing to a single point. Otherwise very efficient. And he's wearing a helmet - a good practice while practicing, even indoors.

The second video, from the UK, shows a demo which *appears* less efficient and a little more awkward by comparison. But it really isn't that bad, and realistically many, many froggers have a similar form to this while climbing and changing over. Or somewhere between the two videos, like me on a good day. I would still want to try getting that seat harness adjusted a little lower, and get a better frog chest harness to replace that horrible webbing loop (a type I used for years before getting one like the guy in the first video). She did a descender check - *almost" a rappel/abseil test - but she never actually fed any rope through it! Also I don't see the point in re-locking the descender again, as she should have been able to keep control of the rope below while removing her upper ascender with the other hand. But admittedly that can be a little tricky when using a Petzl Basic in place of a handled ascender.

As for changing over with a longer J-rack, I would imagine the guy in the first video could manage it by rigging below the Croll. But I'd wader the lady in the second video, along with many other froggers out there, would need to employ a modified changeover technique.

That's funny. I went from a loop of webbing around the neck to a fig. 8 of webbing to a proper GGG chest harness to a fig. 8 of different webbing to a loop of elastic around the neck. We'll see how long that lasts.

I'm attempting to upload a video a j-rack changeover. It may be a while.

GroundquestMSA wrote:[That's funny. I went from a loop of webbing around the neck to a fig. 8 of webbing to a proper GGG chest harness to a fig. 8 of different webbing to a loop of elastic around the neck. We'll see how long that lasts.

Also funny - I went from a webbing figure 8 loop to a home made pseudo-ropewalker style chest harness (without the roller), then to an elastic loop around the neck (which definitely has pros and cons), and finally to a GGG frog chest harness which I modified slightly with elastic across the shoulder blades. To each his own.

Nice video. You look slightly different to your profile picture. You also make a changeover with a long rack look easy, which it probably is if you have ideal body proportions and a well-adjusted frog system. Good effort. But next time please try compressing the video so it isn't a 200 MB download!

Thanks for that upload, Groundquest. I got a chance to practice these with my friend before I climbed out of Teddy Bear Well. I added an extra quick link which helped out a lot, I didn't buy any special clips to do it like I originally intended.